Cheat Sheets

Many famous places have been photographed by famous photographers, so before you take your digital SLR in hand to take pictures of a landmark or other often-photographed site, take some time to look at[more…]

Get comfortable with your digital camera by learning some digital photography lingo and tips that will help you with lighting, portraits, and depth of field so you’re off and shooting great digital photos[more…]

Understanding some basic photography terms will help you take great photos with your digital camera. Take advantage of Photoshop Elements 6.0 to edit and enhance your photos once you’ve loaded them onto[more…]

If you're not familiar with the Nikon D5100 digital camera, here's a quick guide to its buttons, dials, and other external controls. The D5100 kit is sold with the lens shown, the Nikkor 18–55mm AF-S DX[more…]

The Nikon D5100 digital SLR camera offers automatic settings that enable point-and-shoot photography. The settings listed here help you capture the most common types of subjects; just set the Mode dial[more…]

If you have a digital SLR camera, you change lenses based on your artistic vision and the subject or scene you’re photographing. Changing lenses is simple: You push a button and twist the lens to remove[more…]

Live View is an extremely useful feature on your digital camera. When you use Live View, the camera mirror locks up, and you see the scene on your LCD monitor instead of through the viewfinder. This gives[more…]

The quickest way to get great nature photographs is to know your digital camera like the back of your hand. If you have to think twice about which button to use to change a setting, you may lose a great[more…]

The different shooting modes of nature photography are like sub-genres. When you photograph nature, you have myriad subject matter. You have grand landscapes that stretch on forever, wildlife, and small[more…]

The amount of tasks you perform with the camera menu depends on the digital camera you own. Canon camera owners can adjust many settings, such as ISO, with a combination of buttons and dials. Nikon camera[more…]

Your digital camera has many settings. You have settings to change shooting mode, ISO settings, and so on. Most digital cameras have a dial that you use to change shooting modes and lots of other switches[more…]

Most digital cameras give you the option of displaying a histogram alongside the image on your camera LCD monitor. A histogram is a wonderful thing: It’s a graph — well, actually it looks more like a mountain[more…]

Moving things can prevent you from getting a clear digital picture. The movement of your finger pressing the shutter button can cause a blurry picture from slight movement of the camera. The motion of[more…]

The possible brightness values in the scenes you photograph range from dark shadows to bright highlights. When you photograph a scene, pay attention to the direction from which the light is coming.[more…]

Color is another element you can use when composing your digital photographs. The human eye is drawn to warm colors like reds, yellows, and oranges before it recognizes cool colors like blues, cyans, and[more…]

Taking a picture with a wide-angle lens nets a huge amount of real estate in the frame — sometimes too much real estate. When you review images photographed with a wide-angle lens on your camera LCD monitor[more…]

When you photograph a beautiful landscape or an animal, placement of the horizon line can make or break the image. If you place the horizon line in the center of the image, your viewer doesn’t know which[more…]

Photography is an art form. Good photographers use rules of composition to create a compelling photograph people will want to look at. Here's how to visualize your image, arrange what’s in the frame, and[more…]

Your job as a photographer is to arrange the elements in the frame into a pleasing composition that will result in a compelling image that people will want to look at. When you put the viewfinder to your[more…]

The center of interest or focal point in a photo is the predominant feature in the image, the feature to which the viewer is first attracted. When you create a photograph of a landscape, look for a predominant[more…]

You can get precise and use the Rule of Thirds to position the center of interest in the frame. Great photographers have composed their images to draw viewers to the focal point since the beginning of[more…]